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Bad Medicine: 1939

Summer 1938. "General store interior. Florence County, South Carolina." A variety of unpleasant-looking nostrums from the punishment pharmacopoeia. Who wants saltpeter? From the FSA archive, credited to "Cox, photographer." View full size.

Iron or ferrous sulphate, originally called green vitriol. Used as a dye fixative in the textile industry, also to blacken leather and as a constituent of ink, it is used medically to treat iron deficiency anemia. One of the side effects is constipation, which brings us back to my earlier comment on senna...

An alum douche can be used by ladies to "tighten up" their private parts according to a pharmacist I worked with at Walgreens. We sold a fair amount of it too at the Westside Chicago store I worked at.

Two very old gents in their 90's sitting on a park bench talking about their time serving in WW2. One says to the other, "Remember that stuff they used to put in our food so we wouldn't think about women?" The second guy says "Yeah, I think it was called salt peter." The first says "Right, that's it. Anyway, I think it's finally beginning to kick in."

Shorpy.com | History in HD is a vintage photo archive featuring thousands of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1960s. (Available as fine-art prints from the Shorpy Archive.) The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago.